Hi Harm - sorry for that. Some extra info would have been helpful, wouldn't it?

I'm using a Dell laptop (work computer with CS3 on it), Windows XP

2 MB RAM

T7500 @ 2.20 GHz

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU

I upped my virtual memory to about 4,066MB (which was the max allowed and is 2 x my RAM)

I've tried checking for updates for CS3 but I've only seen an update for Illustrator.

In Premiere, I also selected Preferences --> General --> optimize for Memory instead of Performance.

I also researched this extensively on Google and it seems to happen to people who have much better computers than my janky Dell and yet still encountered the issue. I saw Premiere go up to 990,000K in CPU processing. Yikes.

My project = 1.2MB and is only 1 minute in length. I have video, audio, no photo stills, and titles.

CS3 has been known for memory leakage, but the latest updates have solved that. So the first question is, do you have the latest updates?

Dell laptops are notorious (not only Dell, but most non-Sager brands) for their lacking disk I/O. You need at least two SATA (7200 RPM) disks according to minimum requirements and more for comfortable editing. Virtual memory is pretty low when considering only 2 GB of RAM. Defrag your disk and use boot-time optimization for defragging the page file as well.

I actually didn't mean to mark that as "correct" although I guess it is considering my computer. Hopefully you'll still see this.

I need to defrag anyway, it's been a while.

The material I'm editing is just a video I DL'd from YouTube with some AIFF sound files. Again, the project is now only 1 minute in length.

I don't know why the VM issue just started happening though. I was using Premiere religiously for a few months before this happened.

It's just really annoying because every time it happens, Adobe says "we're shutting you down" and then when I try to re-open, they are very kind to create a copy of the file I was working on but you can only do this so much before you go bonkers.

OH - you asked if I have the latest updates. I mentioned above that all I see for updates is something for Illustrator which I've been ignoring because I don't use it. Is that what you mean or are there other updates elsewhere?

Just to be clear: When you say shut down, do you mean PR ends spontaneously or do you mean that the notebook shuts down and turns off the power? That is quite a difference, so please explain what happens exactly.

Since you have a file downloaded from YouTube, this may be the cause of your problems. If you use DV or HDV material that you shot yourself with a video camera, does the same problem still occur?

Hey Harm - PR is the only thing that shuts down. It isn't my computer and nothing else is affected. My project isn't even corrupted and as I mentioned, they're so great about saving and creating a copy before I lose my progress.

I defragged and cleaned out some stuff so, I haven't tried yet, but will in a bit.

Though you have done some cleanup, the tips in this ARTICLE might prove useful to you.

Also, when a system, or a program crashes, or hangs, there is often a breadcrumb trail left behind. This ARTICLE might help you find some clues as to what is happening on your machine, when the problem arises.